Congress authorized the Chief Justice of the United States to appoint to the temporary court three or more district and appeals court judges, each of whom was to serve on a part-time basis for an indefinite term. The court exercised the same powers as a U.S. court of appeals, and it was authorized to prescribe its own rules of practice, which it did when its three district and six circuit court judges convened for the first time in February 1972. The Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals was modeled on the Emergency Court of Appeals, which was established in 1942 to hear appeals in cases involving various wartime price control measures and which heard its last case in 1961.